Every technology possesses its own inherent accidents. Rosa Menkman is a Dutch artist/theorist who focuses on visual artifacts created by accidents in digital media. The visuals she makes are the result of glitches, compressions, feedback and other forms of noise. Although many people perceive these accidents as negative experiences, Menkman emphasizes their positive consequences.

By combining both her practical as well as her academic background, Menkman merges her abstract pieces within a grand theory artifacts (a glitch studies). Besides the creation of a formal "Vernacular of File Formats", within her static work, she also create work in her Acousmatic Videoscapes. In these Videoscapes she strives to connect both sound and video artifacts conceptually, technically and sometimes narratively.

In 2011 Rosa wrote the Glitch Moment/um, a book on the exploitation and popularization of glitch artifacts (published by the Institute of Network Cultures), organized the GLI.TC/H festivals in both Chicago and Amsterdam and co-curated the Aesthetics symposium of Transmediale 2012. Besides this, Rosa Menkman is pursuing a PhD at Goldsmiths, London under the supervision of Matthew Fuller and Geert Lovink.

▓▓Filtering Failure ▓▓▒▒▒▒ ▒▒ ▒▒ ░ ░ ░ catalogue: http://www.slideshare.net/r00s/filtering-failure-exhibition-catalogueIn a culture that is continuously accelerating, filters have become a primal commodity. We use them both to open and to close ourselves to or from any kind of possible information. Filters are ubiquitous. However, we only realize their presence when we lack them or when they fail our expectations. On the other hand, modern digital cultures are inseparable from keywords like functionality, smoothness, order and progress. Interaction designers, programmers and interface developers all work together to understand and execute these mantras. But to really understand these keywords, they have to be defined in relation to what they are not. A successful product designer does not design for the average customer, but instead for the marginal, extreme customer; because when taking the margins as the rule, the middle will take care of itself. ! This is why studying the qualities of disfunction, irregularities, breaks, disorder, damage or even demolition are as important in the development of a new technological product as the researching of its perfect flows and this is also one of the reasons why I think it is important to study failure. The concepts of perfection and failure are a tradeoff of each other. If we want to understand and pursue perfection - we can find this in the pursuit of failure. The exhibition Filtering Failure investigates (the connections between) the procedural terms ‘filtering’ and ‘failure’ and how in (lo-fi) digital arts these terms are being re-invented and re-used. The exhibition asks how Filtering and Failure co-exist; and how these processes influence each other. The exhibition includes new and older works from the avant-garde of glitch artists. These works show the filtering of failure as a generative process, but also to unfold a genre that includes many the different envelopes of personal ways of dealing with failure. Filering Failure is curated by Julian van Aalderen and Rosa Menkman. Participating artists: Paul Davis (US/UK) Benjamin Gaulon (IR/FR) Gijs Gieskes (NL) Jodi (NL/BE) Karl Klomp (NL) no-carrier (US) Notendo (US) Nullsleep (US) Jon Satrom (US) Videogramo (ES) Filtering failure is an initiative of PLANETART and GOGBOT in collaboration with Rosa Menkman and Julian van AalderenPowered by gem. Enschede, Blacklabel Records & Eurotrash Brewery.Opening: 25th of Februari with live visuals by vj the c-men (Enschede): Julian van Aalderen, Sjors Trimbach & Edwin van Aalderen

▓▓Filtering Failure ▓▓▒▒▒▒ ▒▒ ▒▒ ░ ░ ░ catalogue: http://www.slideshare.net/r00s/filtering-failure-exhibition-catalogueIn a culture that is continuously accelerating, filters have become a primal commodity. We use them both to open and to close ourselves to or from any kind of possible information. Filters are ubiquitous. However, we only realize their presence when we lack them or when they fail our expectations. On the other hand, modern digital cultures are inseparable from keywords like functionality, smoothness, order and progress. Interaction designers, programmers and interface developers all work together to understand and execute these mantras. But to really understand these keywords, they have to be defined in relation to what they are not. A successful product designer does not design for the average customer, but instead for the marginal, extreme customer; because when taking the margins as the rule, the middle will take care of itself. ! This is why studying the qualities of disfunction, irregularities, breaks, disorder, damage or even demolition are as important in the development of a new technological product as the researching of its perfect flows and this is also one of the reasons why I think it is important to study failure. The concepts of perfection and failure are a tradeoff of each other. If we want to understand and pursue perfection - we can find this in the pursuit of failure. The exhibition Filtering Failure investigates (the connections between) the procedural terms ‘filtering’ and ‘failure’ and how in (lo-fi) digital arts these terms are being re-invented and re-used. The exhibition asks how Filtering and Failure co-exist; and how these processes influence each other. The exhibition includes new and older works from the avant-garde of glitch artists. These works show the filtering of failure as a generative process, but also to unfold a genre that includes many the different envelopes of personal ways of dealing with failure.

Hey Michael, NickOf course the spectator should have some space and not be overwhelmed with technical information that does not really help in any kind of way to watch the work.

But I answered to Nick s question taking in mind that I know his usual work/curating practice, which involves works that conceptually focus on codecs/compressions or other 'material' artifacts and particularities that have to do with the file format. In fact more and more I see technological constraints like datarate, or compression, file format etc becoming the subject of digital works of art, as some kind of political or punk exploration of the mediums materiality. In the case of this kind of work "genre?" I think a more extensive description is very necessary. Technologies develop faster and faster and sometimes it is difficult or tricky to reverse engineer/rethink how the technology has been exploited to get to a certain result, while the forgotten working method was key to understanding the work. Therefore I think it is important to curate or describe them, and not dismiss and consequently forget about them.

A more flexible way of curating/describing, and also indeed more flexible "original format" boxes for calls in digital (video) art are needed.

depending on the kind of file/perspective of the screening, I think it could be very important to put the codec in the description. You can just follow 'normal/standard' description of a digital work of art and broaden this where needed?If your work exploits or researches a specific codec or compression, then I think the codec could become more important, as part of the materiality of the work, then for instance the aspect ratio. However, aspect ratio is important for screening purposes, so depending for what / where you are writing or how inclusive you want to be, i think you know what to write.

Writing a codec sometimes and other times not, in for instance a screening program, could also be a way of posing attention to an unusual materiality (compression) that has actually gotten form/importance or presence in the specific work. it is not just part of its formal qualities, but can also part of its procedural/production and reception qualities. in this sense this information can be more descriptive then formal. This could however be tricky - mentioning a compfression only in specific times. But as this kinds of works are playing with this kind of trickiness, its also meaningful x2 &&. i think the importance of this data lies somewhere in between description of the work (metadata) and its formal qualities. So as a fast and arguable proposal, what about: "maker. title, date, carrier/material, place. ratio, size, codec of video/sound, data/frame rate. data-size, re-encoding [for for instance stabilization]?", maybe its also important to write where it was published/copied from [thinking about re-encoding on the web]?.oh i could think of so many things that could be interesting for particular files, its to much, so I think we have to think about getting away from the standard description and move to a more fluid description of art-works, in which we can point out the important file properties for the specific place where it is shown or the way the curator want the work to be received. The curator was making this kind of choices anyway, just a bit more strict, maybe.